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Here are 6 must-read divorce memoirs (yes, that’s a genre).
When I was going through it, I read 42 books; several of them were memoirs. It was the memoirs that helped me feel less alone on my journey, even when the circumstances of the writer were different than my own. It was still divorce and someone else had made it through and lived to write about it. Divorce memoirs can restore a sense of belonging. I made a list of memoirs and it became a handout in my divorce group therapy meetings for new members who were just starting the process. That’s actually how Divorceramics came to be.
THE LIST
1
Split: A Memoir of Divorce by Suzanne Finnamore
“I had saved everything. I quite objectively judge myself a fool, an idiot, an imbecile, a sop, a dolt, a tacky bovine cow-figurine-woman who saved everything, while N sashayed off, without a single memory or photograph, glad to be rid of it all, glad to be rid of me. And sweet lil’ organized me, with everything packed nicely in boxes, waiting for what? For the future, I had thought. For our old age, I’d thought.”
In the following scene, Suzanne Finnamore takes everything that she had so carefully saved, and lights it on fire in her kettle BBQ one night. This was so powerful a passage that I did it myself. Her memoir is just that powerful. It is also so well-written, vulnerable, and witty, as she journeys from denial through the panic and lurches toward a “simple contentment.” I read when I didn’t know what to do, hoping that I would find answers to questions about my life in someone else’s wisdom. Of all of the books I read while I was going through the experience of being left, this is the one that perhaps made the biggest impact on me.
2
You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir by Maggie Smith
“How I picture it: That life—the past, the beforelife, the beforemath—was a boat. The life I lived after, the afterlife, was on an island. I was marooned. I watched the horizon for sails. I wasted so much time, sunrise to sunset, thinking about the boat and what had been moving, slowly, darkly, in the water beneath it—time I could have been collecting rainwater or weaving leaves into shelter. Some nights were so overcast, I wondered if there had ever been stars. Other nights, lying on my back, I could see so many stars, anything felt possible.”
Smith captures the whole unknowingness of the divorce arc so well using such honest and beautiful language that I found myself super anxious and feeling it all over again. However, once I got half way through, I was able to move from my heart to my head, and I started saying, “yes, me too, yes, yes, yes.” She writes through the whole experience – from discovering betrayal, to negotiating a divorce, to life afterward – while she’s still living it. Specifically, Smith describes how she treated her husband’s job as more important than hers, the imbalance of power that develops in marriages when one spouse far out-earns the other, keeping silent to keep the peace, holding a piece of rose quartz under the table in the attorney’s office, “listening to sad-ass songs on repeat,” and learning to accept what is.
If you like this book, you may want to check out the episode of Kate Bowler’s Everything Happens podcast in which she talks with Maggie Smith.
3
“Along the way something magical happened. I came to believe that I created my divorce so that I could experience a much richer life. A life I couldn’t have dreamed because I couldn’t possibly deserve something so spectacular.”
His Giant Mistake: Spinning Magic Out of Infidelity and Divorce by Cleo Everest
After moving across the country to Marin County, California with her husband of 15 years and their young kids, Cleo Everest discovers his infidelity through an accidental pocket dial. Yes, she hears her husband order wine up to a hotel room for himself and his girlfriend. This book covers the first year post-betrayal and all that entails — denial, therapy, anger, and hiking.
4
How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed: A Memoir of Starting Over by Theo Pauline Nestor
"But for a stay-at-home mom, divorce isn't just divorce. It's more like divorce plus losing your job. The job I once had—stay-at-home-mom-slash-dilettante-writer—no longer exists."
A breezy memoir that left me feeling somewhat inadequate because she rebounded so quickly, including with a new love interest. Still, worth the read because of some really relatable insights. Because I’ve been known to play ostrich, I loved the chapter in which she draws parallels between her denial of a rat in her house to the excuses she made in her marriage. When she tells herself that what she sees is wild rice on her floor (not rat shit), I laughed out loud.
5
A Beautiful, Terrible Thing: A Memoir of Marriage and Betrayal by Jen Waite
“Every morning in the shower now, I sink to the floor and cry, a silent animal cry, my mouth gaping open and my body hunched forward and when a sound finally comes out, it does not sound human.”
Jen Waite finds her soulmate, only to discover he’s a pathological liar once they’re married. The betrayal is exposed when her daughter is just one month old. Even years after living the experience myself, my stomach dropped when I read the description of searching and scanning cell phone records, hoping that she doesn’t find what she knows to be true.
6
Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey by Florence Williams
“In cataloging my failings, I’d missed an important step, although I didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t yet realize it was okay to be broken, that it was even, perhaps, essential to becoming a more porous animal capable of far more real love than I had known was possible. It would still take some time for me to learn that our flaws are not the problem; rather, it is the failure to forgive them—in ourselves and in others—that trips up our hearts.”
This book is both memoir and science journalism. Williams uses herself as the study subject while investigating conventional wisdom and scientific research on heartbreak and grief. She ingests psychedelics, attends divorce workshops, undergoes genetic testing on her blood, electrical shocks, hikes and camps in the wilderness both with groups and alone, and researches therapeutic modalities on her way to growing comfortable with uncertainty and finding beauty in the everyday after divorce.
Personally, I found that the merging of science and personal story validated my experience in a way that pure memoir alone cannot. There’s something about the scientific angle that makes me take myself and my pain more seriously, which in turn allows me to find compassion for myself and my situation. Self-compassion can help the healing along.
If you found your way here, someone who’s pretty cool cares about you.
Right now I’m sharing the site just with friends of friends with the intention of launching the full site when I’m able. As someone who likes creating clarity from chaos, I designed Divorceramics to consolidate content related to divorce, loss and healing — think of it as a divorce and healing arts aggregator. And, as an artist, I created a line of divorce-inspired ceramics and curated an idiosyncratic collection of objects to soothe the soul. Lastly, as someone who has lived the divorce experience, I established a space for connection to tap the curative power of community to kindle hope. I hope you’ll find your way back here again.